In preparation for a few days away, I wrote up our discipleship notes for this coming Sunday. We're looking at the story of Joshua, and I zeroed in on a couple of words: remembering and renewal. I'll post more about the story and the thoughts on Monday, but it led me to think about the good timing of those themes happening on the first Sunday of the year.

At the end of every year, there are the many top whatever-number-you-choose lists coming out, and of course the infamous New Year's Resolutions get made and broken. And it struck me that these themes in Joshua (and really, throughout Scripture and throughout the life of a Christian) and our society's end/beginning-of-year rituals are really the same thing: looking back and looking forward with hope.

Could it be that this is just how God has wired us? Everyone, Christians and not, seems to have this built-in: we want to remember, and we want to be renewed. We want to look back and we want to look forward with a sense that things can be better, different. Of course, we can (and often do) get off-track - too much looking back without looking forward leads to nostalgia and "living in the past". Too much looking forward without looking back removes us from the bigger picture of our history, and leads to the danger that "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it".

As Christians we know that we look back - back to God's action in the past, and in our past - so that we can look forward with hope. Ultimately we look forward to the return of Jesus, but we can also look forward to a new year, new season, and each new day with hope.

I'll spare you my personal end-of-the-year looking back, but I do want to share with you some things that I'm definitely looking forward to in my work at Concordia for 2010:

• evaluating and renewing our leadership structures to have them better serve our ministry endeavours
• developing a system of small groups to help us "do life" together in an intentional way (you'll be hearing much more about these first two things very early in the new year)
• strengthening our creative arts endeavours in worship and in the life of the congregation
• using great new tools (like this web site) to minister to our people and our community in new ways
• leading some training for youth leaders to help them use technology more effectively in ministry
• leading a session on discipleship for youth at our church body's Nat'l Youth Gathering

I'm excited for the work God has called all of us to do, and I'm excited to see where He will take us in the midst of it!